Blue Skies Lifestyle offers a collection of luxury travel brands, showcasing the best luxury chalet and villa rentals available in Europe and across the globe from a collection of luxury travel brands
In today’s ‘In Conversation With’ we meet Andy and Fran Castle, husband and wife duo who have turned their dream into a successful business, celebrating a milestone 20-years last year. Read on to learn more about their journey, insights into the luxury travel sector and what the next 20 years could hold.
Ski in Luxury was the first brand within your portfolio, which you started in 2005. Please tell us how the idea came about and the initial steps you took to make the idea a reality.
Both of us came to Bournemouth to join the university. I joined in 1998 and Fran in 2000. Neither of us had skied before but we both took our placement year at the same company, Andy in 2001 and Fran in 2003, which was a ski holiday agency based in Bournemouth. We didn’t want to leave the town for the year, and the placement opportunities locally were quite limited so we both reluctantly accepted a sales-based role. It was in 2003 that I rejoined the company after graduating and became the Sales Manager and it was then that I met with Fran and our relationship began.
The company that we worked for dealt with over 4,000 ski properties ranging from bargain-basement apartments to what then was considered top end luxury. It was the more luxurious side that drew me in, and I came up with the idea of creating a website with a refined selection of luxury ski chalets. However, my proposal to the boss was that I would like to go into this on a 50/50 agreement with him. He denied me this opportunity, so I decided to hand in my notice and take on the challenge by myself. At this time, Fran headed off to work for JP Morgan whilst I started up Ski In Luxury.
That’s where the story began…..
Please describe a typical day for you now – if such a thing exists.
No day is the same! It still surprises us how you can go into work on any given day with a plan of action in mind on what you will do and what you will achieve in the day – then, when the time comes to leave the office, you realise that you haven’t even looked at the things that you hoped to! That’s the thing about running your own business…..you never know what will pop up!
We are incredibly lucky to have a wonderful team in place. We have a clear segregation of departments: Sales, Marketing, Product and IT, and both of us get to collaborate with these people daily. Our job is ultimately directing the business and our team – we therefore get involved in all of these departments from mailers and social campaigns to website and CRM developments in-house, contracting and portfolio decisions, accounting and credit control, and obviously still keeping up on the sales front too!
And what do you love most about your job?
We love to support all our team in the many aspects of our day-to-day operation. Most of all, it’s the pride that we, and our team, have in what we do and what we achieve. 20 years ago, we had no idea how big we could become, and now we are arguably the most recognised luxury chalet agency name in the industry. Achieving this together, as a couple, gives us such satisfaction and doing it together means that we can be together and support one another throughout the journey.
Please tell us a little more about each of the four different brands within the Blue Skies Lifestyle portfolio.
It all started in 2005 with the launch of Ski In Luxury. Quickly, Ski In Luxury became established organically. After two years, Fran launched what was then named Resorts In Luxury so that we were able to work alongside each other but still retain our individual focus, me on ski and Fran on villas.
We rebranded the villas website to Villas In Luxury circa 2011 to further develop this brand and focus on the luxury villa rentals market. However, at this time we experienced a big boom in growth for Ski In Luxury and most of our time and focus was taken up with ski holiday demand.
In 2012 we realised that our portfolio on Ski In Luxury was becoming quite vast and that many of our clients would only want to see the very best chalets that we featured, but they would need to trawl through the portfolio to dig those properties out. We decided to launch Ultimate Luxury Chalets to showcase the Top 100 luxury chalets in our portfolio, proposing the crème de la crème of alpine luxury.
Alps In Luxury was then launched in 2018 to showcase a vast range of resorts where visitors can enjoy adrenaline-fuelled and relaxation activities, whilst staying in the best luxury chalets to rent in the summer. For those seeking an alternative to the “regular” beach resort holidays, the Alps offer an opportunity to soak up the sunshine and clear mountain air, while at the same time enjoying an array of activities to keep family and friends entertained and challenged.
Tell us more about the experience of transitioning from Europe to a global portfolio.
We have always had a global portfolio of properties on our Villas In Luxury portfolio. Although at the beginning we got a little excited and perhaps took on too many diverse destinations, we have now refined this selection of destinations to focus on the key areas of luxury living, as well as finding a few gems in destinations that one wouldn’t normally have at the top of the tongue, such as Cantabria in Spain and Le Marche in Italy. We now also showcase some incredible properties in the Maldives featuring up to 9 bedrooms!
You attribute the success of the business not only to your own hard work and determination but to the brilliance and dedication of the team that you have built. Please share how you have recruited and nurtured such a talented team.
We have learnt along the way – sometimes learning the hard way! Recruitment is not easy. You can spend a huge amount of time and resources in interviewing, and in training new recruits up, only to have them decide that it’s not for them, or for our expectations to not be fulfilled. Then it’s back to the starting blocks again….it can be frustrating to find candidates who are the perfect fit, but when you do find those special ones, they are worth it!
Our longest-serving member of the team is also our first-ever recruit. Our IT Manager, Luke Burgess, oversees all our in-house web development and coding. Luke has been pivotal in our successes achieved over the past 10 years.
We have done our best to recruit internally as much as possible, offering the opportunity to develop and grow within the company but we are also now investing in experience to drive us forward in our next stages of growth. Our Head of Sales, Richard Visick, has been in the ski industry for around 25 years and is now leading the sales team and function with incredible vision. The future is looking very bright with Richard at the helm!
I know it’s a bit cliché, but we work hard and play hard. It’s an incredible industry to be in, and we have a team who love the mountains and love to holiday!
You have been in operation for over 20 years now, are there any standout moments for you?
The thing that has given us the greatest satisfaction is being able to do it together, to build what we have as a couple, supporting each other along the way and to be there to share our joint successes.
First from our garage at home, then scaling up to a 3-bedroom property that we converted for business use, and now on to our HQ in Charminster Road in what used to be a bank, a stunning building with beautiful high ceilings and architrave, and even with its own vault in the cellar!
Being recognised by many as THE leading luxury ski chalet agency worldwide. We are the biggest partner for many of the leading operators in the industry
And what do you think the next 20 years holds for Blue Skies Lifestyle?
We had no idea we would end up where we are now 20 years ago so I wouldn’t like to predict the future! Where can we go from here? I guess it’s just keep on driving forwards and growing the business sensibly as we always have done. Spot opportunities to develop new websites and new holiday destinations and experiences. Keep doing what we do, and we know we’ll reap the rewards of our hard work!
Alps in summer or Alps in winter?
Summer!! The Alps in the summer months offer something for everybody. An amazing climate, never too hot, rarely too cold. The flora and fauna, the wildlife, the sense of being immersed in nature. Yes, the mountains in the winter give an incredible feeling of being at one with the environment, but when the mountains are combined with nature, flora and fauna, alongside the abundance of activities on offer, summer in the mountains is an incredible place to be!
Which is your all-time favourite resort and why?
To ski, it would have to be Val d’Isere. So many memories of various stays, from FAM trips to more personal stays when Fran and I were dating, to holidays with our two girls, including one where our youngest, Sienna, first clipped on her skis on her 2nd birthday!
Val d’Isère has a charm that captivates you. The restaurants are incredible, the après-ski is raucous and fun-filled, and the skiing domain offers something for everyone.
Luxury is highly subjective – what does it mean to you personally?
Luxury for us is many things; time, family, freedom. It’s not a material thing necessarily; it’s being able to have these things that we can’t always enjoy as much as we would like due to running a growing successful business.
Finally, what is your life motto?
A wise friend once said, “Life is like an ice cream. Enjoy it before it melts.” It says it all really!
Find out more: https://www.blueskieslifestyle.com/
